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Varieties of delusional consensus regarding "globality"
The Consensus Delusion (Part #3)
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In the schema which follows, the nature of "globality" is used as a simple metaphor for the consensus so variously, desperately and vainly sought in different domains.
| Engagement with consensus in the light of engagement with "globality" | |
| Modality | Characteristics |
| Some simply believe in it | They have faith in the unseen, without fully understanding its nature, in the manner of religion and deep ecology |
| Some deduce it in the light of complex measurement procedures | They have the quantitative skills of science, and confidence in complex chains of logical inference, but are challenged to "ex-plane" their understanding |
| Some declaim it as a reality | As with imperialists, they are preoccupied with the global extension of their domain of influence, without recognizing the challenge implied by curvature |
| Some simply experience it | They take risks in exploring unknown elsewheres with whatever navigational skills they assume they can rely on |
| Some depict it as an attractive symbol and dramatize it | They use imaginative aesthetic skills, and any available technology, without necessarily being concerned with their cognitive implication |
| Some fear it as a challenge to their competence | As with the military, they see it as giving strategic advantage to their enemies over conventional dependence on linear framings of reality |
| Some endeavour to inculcate it as necessary dogma | Possibly using censorship, they seek to ensure that no misguided alternative view emerges as in any way preferable or relevant |
As with the traditional tale of the seven blind men and the elephant, these particular understandings of globality are essentially delusional -- sustained by the preferred modality in each case. Any sense of the globality of Earth is clumsily and partially inferred in such a way as to invite alternative perspectives as to its implication -- the reality of today.
The same is more profoundly the case with regard to consensus. Just as the men in the tale are unable to achieve meaningful consensus with regard to the nature of the elephant, global civilization is much challenged to achieve any meaningful operational consensus on the nature of integrative understanding -- on consensus itself. This does not of course prevent each from vigorously asserting a particular understanding and deploring the inadequacies of the other -- seemingly quite incapable of "getting it". The polarized discourse between religions, between science and religion, between political factions, between development and environment, etc, is all of this nature.
There is no understanding of what consensus might mean within such a context -- other than as an obligation on others to "agree with us, and rightly so", possibly seen as fundamental to foreign policy (Us and Them: relating to challenging others, 2009). It is in this sense that what is understood in aspirations to consensus is delusional, including that sought by Richard Dawkins regarding the delusional nature of belief in God.
The situation for those living on various areas of the globe offers a striking metaphor for the challenge. Whilst one group may claim it is midday, another is forced simultaneously to note that it is midnight. The shape of the surface which reconciles these two perspectives is completely unknown in the case of the quest for any mutually meaningful consensus. Furthermore it is a matter of no interest or relevance, since the experience of each is upheld as uniquely right. Whilst the metaphor may appear trivial, the consequence of the lack of any richer understanding of the topology on which consensus could be built is simply tragic.
Curiously, as with the flat Earth worldview of centuries long past, there is no understanding of the meaning of "round" which could be of relevance to an understanding of consensus.
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